


Hydrogen Peroxide

by Glass_Child (PsychoSkepticalSatan)



Category: Death Note
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 21:09:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7590490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychoSkepticalSatan/pseuds/Glass_Child
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(NOT COMING ANY TIME SOON!!!  THIS IS JUST A... UM... SNEAK-PEEK, I GUESS?!?!)</p>
<p>The gradual loss of identity, or the perpetual absence of one since the beginning?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hydrogen Peroxide

**Author's Note:**

> This might be triggering... Will add specific warnings for the beginning of each chapter. 
> 
> Just so you have fair warning, beyond this chapter what i have writen as of yet is quite frankly disgusting. It is one million times too graphic and i feel sick reading over it. I wanted to really make an 'artistic statement' about how brutal life can be, but it just morphed into a violent, pornographic nightmare of exponential proportions.... Still tossing up whether to post as-is or not...
> 
> This chapter contains semi-graphic depictions of violence.
> 
> On the bright side, I absolutely love feed back, so please do not feel shy to leave your comments!!!!

He ignored the yelling, at first.  
"Hey!  Dickfuck!  Listen!"  
It was easy enough.  And he might as well ignore it, as the outcome would be the same.  
The first few blows he could ignore.  The first kick to the stomach was survivable, too.  After all, Mello hardly ever wore shoes.  
"Fucking listen to me, you cock sucking cuntface!  Go to fucking hell, you fit right in, you insignificant piece of shit!"  
Though Mello had been speaking English less than eighteen months, he really had quite the colourful vocabulary.  Near finally looked up.   
"Just because you come from a bad family, does not mean you should take out your anger on me,"  
Near would never say anything intentionally crule, but the way Mello's soft features hardened into a mask of pure, undiluted rage made Near wonder if he should have worded his statement in a less confrontational way.  
Near felt his breath leave him as Mello pushed him to the ground, arms behind his back, left cheek cool against the hardwood floor.   
Mello dropped down on top of the struggling ten-year-old, one knee pressing harshly into his spine.  A single, fluid movement was all it took for Mello to painfully rip Near's head back —fingers entwined in his soft, white hair, pulling as hard as possible without breaking his neck— and position his other arm underneath Near's chin.  Mello sneered down at him.   
"You ever talking like that to me again,  I fucking kill you,"   
No louder than a murmer, and with his thick Russian accent the words all slurred together, leaving the sentence an unintelligible mess of heavy consonants and polished vowls.  
"Can you please repeat that, Mello?  Your English is still less than perfect, muttering certainly doesn't—,"  
That was the last straw. Mello yelled out as he smashed Near's face against the ground, breaking his nose, but in the process unintentionally injuring his own arm. Near managed to twist underneath Mello in this brief moment of distraction, throwing the older boy off and forcing himself up.  
He rushed for the door, much faster than he thought himself capable of, but Mello was just that much quicker.  Mello lunged, wrapped his arms around Near and simultaneously threw his legs forward and underneath the smaller child, using the momentum to pull himself down onto his back,  with Near on top.   
He released Near from his vice-like hold, but before he could even contemplate getting away, Mello rolled so Near was once more at his mercy.   
Mello punched the him in the throat, leaving the boy gasping for air, and pulled him up by the collar of his blood-splattered pyjamas.  Near more heard than felt his head collide with the wall, though he did feel something warm trickle down his back.  Blood.  His fingers grew numb and his vision dimmed slightly around the edges.  I'm dying! Near felt Mello knee him in the stomach.  Next, he sort-of felt the child punch him in the face, but by then his whole body was more than half numb. He heard yelling. Somebody! Help! The voices of students, calling for the supervisors, the voice of his assailant, screaming wildly for them to stay back, the voices of inexperienced adults finally arriving at the scene, not having a single clue about how one would handle such a situation. Don't feint, or you might die! Don't! 

~*~*~*~ 

"Don't come near me! Get the fuck back, you move, I kill him. Got it?"  
Mello yelled, voice cracking with frustrated tears. He punctuated the question by pulling Near the slightest bit forward, and snapping him backward, once again throwing the boy's bloodied head against the bricked, now red-stained wall.  
Nobody moved.  Mello meant business and no one was stupid enough to approach him.  
He dropped Near, who promptly fell to the floor, and walked the young albino's desk.  Scissors.  He held them open in his hand, blade slicing a thin, red line into his palm.   
He didn't walk forward with all the suave in the world, like they do in the movies.  He stumbled heavily toward the group of people —all still paralysed with shock— almost loosing whatever semblance of balance he retained as he slipped in Near's blood.  
Everybody finally managed to move just in time as Mello rushed directly through the door way, scissors held out in front of him.  Had the group of hapless spectators been just a second more tardy, this would inevitably have turned into a massacre.  Mello was not going to slow down and risk getting caught just so he could avoid some collateral damage.  
The second he was out the door, Mello broke into a dead run, not looking back, even for a second.  
This was the eighth time he had ran away from Wammy's House in the past year. 

~*~*~*~

Finally breaking from her stuper, a young female instructor, Vixen, skidded across the floor toward where Near had collapced, unable to hold himself up.  
"Someone call an ambulance! And someone follow Mello! Wammy's is now in lockdown! You all know the drill!"  
Vixen shouted, gesturing wildly at the crowd, before returning her attention to the bleeding child,  
"C'mon, buddy, don't die on me."

~*~*~*~

Students tripped over one another trying to get back to their rooms. Even the "twelfth graders", as they would have been known, had Wammy's followed the traditional syllabus, didn't want to play adrenaline junky and mess with the trigger-happy pre-teen.  
Teachers guarded every corridor, looking tough, but privately afraid. It was common knowledge Mello's forte was anything stealth, speed, agility, stamina, pain tolerance or requiring spontaneous adaptation. In other words, Mello was beyond compare when it came to any kind of physical altercation.  
That's why the instructors tended to overlook his violent acts.  
But this time they couldn't. Not when a child's life was on the line.  
But now, as they stood their ground, alert and ready, they wondered how many more children's lives they had just put on the line, by protecting that one boy nobody even liked.  
An awful, biased thought, that they were unable to keep from penetrating their consciousness.  
How many children are we going to risk for Near?

~*~*~*~

In the midst of all the chaos, one boy stood dead still, though not frozen in shock.   
Awestruck.  He was awestruck.  
He clung to every word the blond screamed, heavily accented and raw and beautiful, eyes tracing the path Mello's comically golden hair took as it whipped around his head, he smelled the blood, tasted it, salty and metallic and thick in the air.  The blood looked gorgeous on Near's boring, white pyjamas.  He moved along with everyone else when they darted out of Mello's way, but unlike them, who either watched Mello in horror as he bolted down the corridor, covered in blood and shaking like a rabid dog, or stared at Near, fearing the worst possible outcome, he watched Mello like he was something of a dream.  So many worlds away, though only just out of reach.  
Children rushing to their dorms broke him from his reverie, lockdown, he knew the drill, but elected to do otherwise.  He slipped into the shadows and listened over the top of the ruckus, hearing Mello's retreating footfalls, either real or imagined.  He's only just out of reach, go on, go on! The boy leaned forward, hand outstreached.  Just out of reach.  

And he ran.

~*~*~*~

Near could hear voices. Disembodied voices. Talking in rushed, complex medical terms, that he was fairly sure he would understand if his mind wasn't slipping and tripping over the simplest thoughts.  
There was some kind of unnameable, incessant beeping.  
He tried to open his eyes, but failed. Maybe my eyes ARE open! Am I blind? Am I dead?!? Near thought in panic. He heard his breathing quicken, and the voices intensify subsequently. No, stop. Calm down, Near. Why would I be dead?  
He felt his breathing slow to a more manageable pace.  
Think, think, think. What is the last thing I remember? I was..., in my room? Yes, that seems right..., I was playing with..., no, I was doing a puzzle, yes, yes. But then what?  
Near tried once again, to force his eyes open. Unsuccessful.  
Then what, then what, then what, then what? Did..., did Mello come in? I think I remember Mello coming in..., oh, yes, he did! Why?  
Near did not attempt to open his eyes this time, instead, he decided to approach this a different way. He refrained from breathing for about ten seconds, before allowing the cool oxygen to re-enter his respiratory system. He could feel it.  
Why did Mello come into my room? He was..., yelling? Yes, yelling. Oh. Oh, oh, oh, crap. AM I DEAD?!? I REMEMBER, SHIT! DID MELLO KILL ME?!?!  
Once again, Near felt his breathing become more and more erratic as he fought in vain to control it, before he realised something. Dead people don't have problems controlling hyperventilation. Dead people don't breath.  
Near's eyes flew open in shock, and he was met with ultra-bright fluorescent lights coming from somewhere directly overhead. After his eyes finally adjusted he could see men and women in hospital-issue green jump suits, fussing over him, writing on clipboards, checking monitors and IVs, and shouting instructions. A lady helped him take a drink from a glass she was holding —damn, he was thristy— a man changed the the bed angle slightly so he was more upright, another man dimmed the lights just enough so they were no longer quite so offensive to Near's eyes.  
The man with the clipboard, his badge read 'Dr WILSON, Anthony', sat on the chair by Near's bed.  
"Hello, I'm Dr. Wilson. Can you tell me your name?"  
Near started to speak, but just ended up coughing.  
"Okay, just quietly, not too loud,"  
"Near,"  whispered; strained.  
"Alright, Near, and how old are you?"  The man spoke whilst scribbling a seemingly endless torrent of notes onto his clipboard.  
"Ten,"  
"And where do you live?"  
"Wammy's House,"  
"And your birthday?"  
The man continued to ask mundane, simple questions for quite some time, and Near replied with mundane, simple answers for just as long.   Eventually, Near was sent in for testing.   
He had been concussed when he fell down the stairs and had been completely catatonic for the past six days, according to Dr. Wilson.  It was hospital procedure to check for any potentially devastating damage to basic cognitive function.   
Sight?  Check.  Hearing?  Check.  Balance?  Check.  Fine motor skills?  Check.  Speach?  Check.  And so on...  
Near already knew he was neurologically fine.  
He also knew he had three badly broken ribs, a hairline fracture across his lower jaw and a sprained right wrist.  He didn't even need the nurses to tell him.

After a long, boring, long, slow, long, repetitive day of testing, Near was finally released. Roger came to pick him up, and though he should have been apprehensive to return upon being informed that Mello was indeed back at Wammy's, he could not find it in himself.  
He knew of Mello's past, it was easy enough to deduce if you knew what to look for, and he knew that it was almost definitely the cause of Mello's behavioural issues. Where any normal person would be feeling anger, fear or hate toward him, Near could only feel pity and compassion. If Mello ever wanted someone to talk to, he would be there for him.  
But that would never happen. Because Mello hated Near.  
Mello wanted to be number one, but so did Near. Why should M have more rights to said numeral than N? Near wanted to be L's successor with all of his heart and soul, so never once could he allow Mello to win. If Mello wanted to win, he could damn well study harder! After all, if you get an accelerated ride to the top of the mountain, when you get to the highest altitude, you won't know how to breathe.  
But apparently Mello would not accept this, and began regularly proving to Near that he was definitely better whenever physical elements came into play. Punches, kicks, pushes, take downs came endlessly, and Near was completely defenceless.  Near liked to tell himself this was just due to their three year age-gap, though deep down he knew that even as an adult, he would never be even half as toned as the thirteen-year-old Mello.  
Mello could easily bring down any kid (and most of the instructors) in a fight, he could run the fastest and endure the most, he excelled at shooting —even the machine guns—, and he could climb almost anything.  Almost anything included electrified or barbed fences.   
Though a small number of the seventeen and eighteen year olds could certainly lift heavier weights than him, the difference was only in Mello's smaller physique.  Not only was he younger, but he also had a very fragile, skinny frame.  
Mello excelled in everything Near decided was not worth his time.  
Mello, along with being the resident super athlete, was also multilingual, being fluent in Russian, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish and able to learn a new language in just under a month, was phenomenal with codes, riddles and cyphers (admittedly, Near did not think of this as a useless skill, but he was too black-and-white for this.  He couldn't see the plethora of hues), and when he felt so inclined, he was an absolute social butterfly.   
And he actually had initiative.  Maybe a bit too much, even.  
But Near had his own areas of expertise that Mello could never top him in.  
Math (Mello was just too impatient), multitasking (he just didn't have the adequate processing speed to watch seven monitors simultaneously.  Simple as that), art, music, chemistry, biology, chemistry, physics..., Well, anything moderately academic or creative.  
They both had their talents, it just so happened that Mello's talents weren't quite what Wammy's house was looking for in a successor. It also happened that Near's IQ (north of one hundred and ninety) put him so ridiculously far ahead of everyone, without him even trying, that nobody could ever get ahead, little own Mello, who had a surprisingly low IQ for a student at Wammy's (south of one hundred and fifty). Not that anyone would have guessed, considering M was never any more than a fraction of a mark bellow N.

Near found himself trying to analyse Mello, once again, in the car as he watched the scenery flash past his window. He could never really suss him out.  
Parents were clearly at least negligent. Near figured this from his extreme, attention seeking behaviour. He was violent, prone to fits of rage. He was obsessed with neatness and order.  He ate a lot of chocolate.  He worshipped L.   
And he hated Near.  
But that was all.   
Mello had no friends, no obvious hobbies, no taste in music, movies or television shows.  Not even so much as a favourite colour.  He was empty.  
Near knew many people would think the same of him, at a glance, but unlike Mello, after closer examination they would see all of his likes and dislikes.  That he liked puzzles, that he disliked murderes, that liked the shade white, that he disliked meat and so on.  
That's why he had not given up on Mello.  He figured that maybe, just maybe, if he searched for long enough he would find something.   
He had been searching for over two years now.

~*~*~*~

The boy ran, as fast as he could manage after Mello.  He didn't even know why, but the voice, the voice that only he could hear, had told him to do so.  It had never been wrong before.  
The blond was so much faster and he struggled to keep up.  
You have to catch him, trust me.  
And the blond stopped.  Stopped and spun.  
"What the fuck?  Come near me and I slit your throat, bitch!  Did you bring the police?"

"I— I came alone, my name is Matt,"


End file.
